by Jeff Deck
It takes a minute for the door to open. A grey-haired woman, her face set in hard lines, raises her chin to challenge me. Her eyes are dry. “Yes? Who are you?”
“Ma’am, I’m Divya Allard,” I say. “I’m investigating the truth behind your son’s death.”
“Are you with the—” the woman says, and then stops. “No. I know you. You’re that cop that went insane last year when your girlfriend died. Lost your job, didn’t you?”
“I did,” I say. I smile. Good old painful honesty. More pain now, less later. “Thanks for remembering me. This is actually a private investigation I’m conducting—”
“We’ve already talked with the police,” the woman says. “I’d rather leave my son’s death to the hands of the professionals, if you don’t mind. Good night, Miss Allard.” She starts to close the door.
I jam my foot in the door. Still smiling to show I’m not threatening, just a woman of very firm mind. “Sorry, wait,” I say quickly. “I believe your son’s death and my fiancée’s death are connected. In a way the police department may not be ready to acknowledge. May I come in, please?”
Mrs. Tsoukalas gives me a hard, thoughtful stare. Then, finally, she says, “Come in. But you may only talk to me. We’re having a—difficult time tonight. And one of your old colleagues has upset everyone enough with his questions.” She opens the door grudgingly.
I come in, wondering whose ham-fisted approach I can thank for setting me up so poorly. Was it Prince? Bradley? Whoever he was, I hope he isn’t coming back anytime soon.
“Let me just say first that I’m so sorry for your loss,” I say to Mrs. Tsoukalas as we stand in the foyer. It’s a nice, cozy house, with cheerful watercolors on the walls and a fine carved wooden staircase leading upstairs. Graham had it good. “I don’t know what it’s like to lose a son, but I know—”
“Let’s cut to the chase,” says Mrs. Tsoukalas. Still dry-eyed. Toughness is the strategy she’s selected to cope. I have a feeling she’s the boss in this family. “Do you have any new information? All the Portsmouth police have told us is that Graham is dead, and that he was found on Peirce Island.”
“I’m still working from limited information myself,” I say carefully. “I got an anonymous call from someone wanting me to look into the matter. They told me Graham had something implanted in his wrist—a gadget of some sort. My fiancée, Hannah, had the same thing in her wrist. I’m pretty sure that means they both belonged to the Tenacious Trainers gym.”
Mrs. Tsoukalas looks interested. “An anonymous call. Very cloak and dagger, this business, and very unlike my son. You’re right: the wrist implant was a health monitor. Some of the Tenacious Trainers use them for motivation during their workouts. You say you’re only pretty sure your girlfriend was a gym member? I’m surprised you didn’t know for certain.”
“She was hiding a thing or two from me. Which made investigating her death difficult . . . Mrs. Tsoukalas, can I take a quick look in your son’s room? I’m not in the mind to snoop. I just need a better idea of what Graham was like.”
A tall grey-haired man comes in from the family gathering in the adjacent room. His face is haggard and his eyes are wet from weeping. “Vera,” he says, “is everything all right? Who is this?”
“Joe, this is Indira Allard,” says Mrs. Tsoukalas. “She’s no longer with the police force, but she currently helps them with special investigations when they need a hand, isn’t that right?”
“That’s right,” I say. I’m so grateful for her covering for me that I don’t bother to correct her version of my name. The fewer people I have to talk to here tonight, the better. I may not have much time.
“Well, I wish you all the luck in the world with your investigation,” Mr. Tsoukalas says. “If someone is responsible for Graham’s death—if there’s a person or people to blame—I would love to know about it. Believe me.”
Mrs. Tsoukalas breaks in before I can answer. “Don’t worry about all that now, dear,” she says. “I’ll help Indira find what she needs. Why don’t you go back to consoling the rest of the family? Aunt Olivia needs a minder so she doesn’t fall over. Again.”
Her husband nods hurriedly, eager to please. He shuffles back into the living room, to be greeted by a chorus of half-audible questions.
I’m half-expecting Mrs. Tsoukalas to kick me out. Instead, she steps onto the stairs and turns to me with an irritated expression. “Well? You wanted to see his room?”
“Yes, thank you so much,” I say, and I follow her up.
The door at the right side of the landing leads into Graham Tsoukalas’s room. At first glance, it looks like the normal abode of a twenty-year-old guy. Computer on the desk. Posters on the walls. Bookcase full of books. Everything in tidy order. I crouch down by the bookcase and note the titles by Kant, Kierkegaard, Locke.
“Philosophy major?” I ask.
“Yeah, in spite of our pushing him in a more, uh, practical direction,” Mrs. Tsoukalas says. “But hey, he’s paying for—” a pause here— “he was paying for his own education, so we didn’t stand in his way. He loved to ask those larger questions. What’s it all about? What constitutes truly moral behavior? Quiet kid, you know, a great bore at parties, but very thoughtful. We hoped he’d crack open some of life’s mysteries when he got older and clue us in.”
I hold back the urge to say I’m sorry again—during my time on the force, I learned just how useless those words are. Instead, I look more around the room. The computer would be the obvious place for clues, but it’s password-locked. “You don’t happen to know the . . .”
“No,” Mrs. Tsoukalas says. “We weren’t those kind of parents. At least not once he was old enough to be trusted.”
I’m sure the Portsmouth PD will be able to get into Graham’s system. But I don’t have the resources or time that they do. I’ll just have to gather my own clues the old-fashioned way. I absently open the top drawer of Graham’s desk, dig around in the pens and rogue paper clips, and find a burned DVD. It says: Backup.
Backup what? Homework videos? Graham’s favorite exercise routines? Let’s dare to dream and say a backup of Graham’s video suicide note, or a secret video confession about the one person he thinks is out to kill him. Unlikely, but. Hmm. There’s a small TV in the corner with a DVD player. “Is it okay if I . . .?”
“Be my guest,” says Mrs. Tsoukalas, not smiling.
I go over to the DVD player and pop Backup into it. I turn on the TV. Then I immediately regret what I’ve done.
A young couple appears on the screen, a white man and woman. They are naked. The man is taking the woman from behind. I can’t see either of their faces. The woman is slender and wispy with pale blonde hair; the man is broadly built, like a football player, and sporting a tight ass. This is not a professional-grade video; this is amateur dorm-room porn.
Another young man enters the frame now. Also naked. He’s holding his erect dick, but that’s not what I’m focusing on: it’s the face. His face matches the one in the family photos in the foyer downstairs. This is Graham Tsoukalas. With a quick glance at the camera, Graham sticks himself in the girl’s mouth.
I hurry to turn off the TV. I should have done it thirty seconds ago, with Mrs. Tsoukalas standing right here. But damn me, I just had to see if this was a clue.
Now I know. It’s a pretty big fucking clue, all right.
“I’m so sorry,” I sputter at Graham’s mother. “I had no idea what was . . .”
She waves a hand at me. “It’s—it’s fine. We’re all grownups here. I know you’re just as shocked as I am right now.” Mrs. Tsoukalas’s face is still calm and composed, though the tightness in her voice belies the effect. She looks away from me.
Much as I’d rather change topics, I have to ask. “Mrs. Tsoukalas. Do you—uh—have any idea who the other two people were in the video?”
She sighs. “Yes. I think I do. They’ve been over here a few times. Wallace and Neria. That’s N-E-R-I-A for the latter. I don’t rem
ember their last names.”
“You don’t happen to know where they live, do you? Were they also students at Great Bay?”
“I know they were students, but I’m not sure about—” She breaks off, listening. I heard it too. We go to the window and peek behind the curtains.
A police car has just pulled up. And Officer Skip Bradley, jackhole par excellence, is getting out.
Bradley couldn’t have been less helpful when I found you. I’m utterly unsurprised at his clumsiness in handling the grieving Tsoukalases tonight. Given our history, he’s the one of the last cops I’d prefer to find me here at the victim’s house.
“Shit,” I say. “My old colleague may be unhappy to see me.”
Mrs. Tsoukalas frowns. Then, thank God, she says, “There’s another way out. But you’ll have to be careful. I only ask that you do me a favor in return.” She ejects the DVD and returns it to its case, then hands it to me.
“Please keep this out of the police’s hands,” she says. “I’m—fine with whatever Graham chose to do in his spare time. I remember what college was like. But I refuse to let this video wind up as fodder for the Portsmouth Porthole or, God forbid, the TV news. You know what they do. How they love the lurid little details.”
“I do know,” I say, and I put the DVD in my jacket pocket.
Mrs. Tsoukalas guides me toward a window at the end of the hallway. She opens it and I take a peek out. Not exactly a back staircase out of the house. There’s a lower roof overhanging a back porch. If I climb out onto it and lower myself from the edge, I may be able to drop on the ground with a minimum of broken limbs.
I hear the door open downstairs. The husband, Joe Tsoukalas, says: “Officer Bradley. Thanks for coming back. Your special contractor colleague Indira is upstairs with my wife—would you care to go up there as well?”
Fuck. I forget my reservations and scramble out the window and onto the roof. It’s more slippery than I was expecting. I try to take the roof at a crawl—but I end up skidding, fast. In desperation, I grab a nearby tree branch overhanging the roof.
The slim branch breaks. I’m back on my way down.
I fumble and grab for the roof edge as I go over it. Somehow, I do get a hold, grasping painfully with the fingers of one hand, and I slam into the side of the house, making someone inside gasp. From the sound, I’m pretty sure I cracked a window. I lose my grip and fall backwards into a row of bushes just below me. It’s a short fall. But I could have hoped for less spiky plants to break that fall.
Not the most dignified start to my investigation.
It only takes a moment to extricate myself from the bushes, and then I’m running. I wonder if Bradley has had the sense to come back downstairs yet. I decide rather than heading straight for the front of the house, to circle around the other side first. I can always follow some circuitous route back to my car later on.
As I round the corner, I run right into Officer Skip Bradley. Both of us fall to the ground.
Bradley’s the one on top. He vaults upward. His piggish features glare with hatred down at me. I start to get up, but Bradley pulls his service weapon out and points it at me, screaming, “Stay on the ground!”
4
It looks like my investigation is over. I give a brief thought to how I’ve failed you already. Again. And just when I had the hint of a lead. One dead college student, two Tenacious Trainer memberships, a threesome…
“You’re under arrest for impersonating a police officer, dirtbag!” Bradley shouts at me. He’s really taking this personally. I happen to take it personally too—it’s a false accusation, after all. I haven’t impersonated a police officer. Okay, so I let a slight misunderstanding transmit from Mrs. Tsoukalas from Mr. Tsoukalas, but I never actually said I was still a cop. These details are important, no? I’m tensing up. Anger level one and rising.
Then someone else steps out of the shadows and says a single, magic word: “FBI.”
Bradley looks up in confusion. Swings his gun toward this new threat.
“Whoa, whoa!” says the newcomer, putting both his hands up. A badge glints.
“Don’t shoot the nice federal agent,” I say from the ground. “Use your head, Skip. That’s what it’s there for.”
With great reluctance, Officer Skip Bradley lowers his gun and takes a closer look at the other man. So do I, as the agent steps into the light. He’s Korean-American, in his thirties, with a face used to smiling. Amusement glints in his wide, alert eyes.
“Special Agent Ethan Jeong,” he says. “Sorry to interrupt this reunion of Portsmouth PD’s finest, but Ms. Allard needs to come with me.”
“The fuck she does,” Bradley spits at him. “You can’t interfere with my arrest!”
“Actually, I can,” is all Jeong says. He waits for Officer Bradley to process.
The returning protest dies in Bradley’s mouth. His mental wheels may be slow to turn, but they’re turning now. He knows as well as I do that the FBI has a resident agency office right here in town. Jeong will have colleagues and a supervisor to back him up. And when it comes to local blue versus the feds, the feds always win.
“Fuck,” Bradley says. He doesn’t stop Jeong as the agent helps me to my feet. But he does say, “Aren’t you at least going to give me an explanation I can take back to the chief? He’s going to piss bullets over this.”
“Let him,” Jeong says. “Your supervisor and my supervisor can work things out.” He flings a business card at Bradley. The card flutters to the grass a few feet shy of its target.
Bradley mutters something about swinging dicks and traitor bitches as he bends to retrieve the card. At this time Jeong is walking me quickly back towards his car, parked just in front of mine.
“So is this an arrest too?” I ask.
Jeong smiles and shakes his head. “You don’t see me forcing you to do anything, do you? You can walk away if you want to. But I think you’re smarter than that. Sorry, I know you’re smarter than that—I’ve read your file. We’ve passed it around the office.”
I am grateful, but my gratitude reaches only so far. “What do you want from me?” I ask.
“Your help,” Jeong says. “A partnership. Come on back with me to the office and my supervisor will explain everything.”
I insist on another, closer look at Agent Jeong’s badge, and he hands it over. It looks legit. Right now I can’t imagine what kind of interest a federal agency would have in one dead white kid. But I’m curious to find out. I hop in the agent’s car, and he drives us away.
So, the night is getting weirder. And colder. I wrap my jacket tighter around myself as I step out of the car. We’re not far from the Piscataqua here on Daniel Street.
My situation started to feel unreal as soon as Agent Jeong intervened to save me from arrest. Now I’m not sure what to expect as he leads me into the looming hulk on Daniel Street, the McIntyre Building. I can’t recall having ever gone into the big government building before, whether for business or pleasure.
Given this sense of unreality, I’m thinking anything is now possible. In short, I’m thinking a little like you.
I’m imagining that we walk into a snow-covered cathedral with a host of elves in pointy shoes greeting us to the Land of Winter’s Eve. I’m picturing a burning cavern with a choir of demons in fiery balconies, singing as the Devil himself administers me the rites of damnation at an altar of virgin’s blood. Surely I won’t step into—an office building.
I step into an office building. It’s dark and dull in the lobby, not any more exciting than the adjoining post office. And yet, and yet, I’m braced for anything to pop out on this evening of the unforeseen.
“Just up these stairs a couple of floors,” says Agent Jeong lightly, leading the way. He sounds pleased, almost flirtatious, as he goes on: “You’re gonna love it. The dreariest little corner of bureaucracy on the Seacoast, but what we get up to is extremely interesting.”
“Can’t wait to hear all about it,” I mutter.
&
nbsp; We walk into a forest of cubicles on the third floor. Ethan Jeong has prepared me accurately. It is dreary in here. Dark, and desperately in need of a dusting. But the tables are groaning with important-looking documents, the grey fabric walls of the cubicles are plastered with dim photographs and drawings, and the whiteboards are streaked with impossible-to-decipher diagrams. All in all, a far more mysterious air hangs over the office than I would have expected.
I thought I understood the typical investigations of the Portsmouth resident agency: fraud, corruption, online scams, kiddie porn, etc. Just like the other nine resident agencies in this region that answer to the Boston FBI field office. But I never actually worked with the local agents or even met them. My job as a patrol officer didn’t call for it. Most people living around here don’t even know the FBI has a Portsmouth outpost, and that’s the way a spook office likes it.
Another agent, a tall Hispanic woman with a somber expression, gets up from her cubicle as soon as we come into view. “Jeong,” she says. “I’ll get SSA Marsters right away.”
“You’re a peach, Ramirez!” he sings out. Is he flirting with her, too, or is all this sunniness just standard-issue Jeong? During college, I gave up on reading men as a waste of time.
A stocky woman with iron-grey hair appears, file in hand. I sense the change in Agent Jeong’s demeanor immediately upon seeing her. He’s still smiling, but his body language is stiff. He stops playing with his hair. And he waits for Marsters to speak first.
Supervisory Special Agent Marsters ignores him and walks right over to me. She stands a little closer than I’m comfortable with. But I don’t want to show any weakness by stepping back. Instead I meet and hold her gaze.
“You don’t look like an Allard,” the woman says.
Here it is. The anger churns deep in me, like volcanic activity.
SSA Marsters rubs her chin. I notice a few small hairs on it. I am hyperfocused on the agent as she goes on: “You look like a Patel to us. Or a Chatterjee. Maybe a Bannerjee. What kind of a Hindu name is ‘Allard?’”
